Sin is always easy [a boring tech blog]

I have a work provided cell phone. The LG VX8300. Boasted by it’s manufacturer to be a multimedia device capable of playing MP3s, videos and a multitude of games. It comes from the Verizon shop with roughly 6mb memory.

Any pirate with a computer and a cd-rom drive can tell you that 6mb is enough room for two or three low quality tunes. This means that if you bought a $20.00 - 256mb MP3 player you’d be doing much better for a lot cheaper.

There was only one thing I could do. I called around to inquire about a memory card. My phone as it turns out takes a micro sd memory card. They come in the normal increments from 128mb to 2gb (at the time of this post) as do every other media storage device. This chip no matter how large the capacity is no bigger than my thumb nail (mind you I have large hands and equally proportionate fingers and thumbs that include matching finger and thumb nails).

Verizon was more than happy to set me up with a 256mb card for $20.00 or more I really can’t remember. It was enough of a turn off to walk over to the Radio Shack where they told me roughly $50.00 for 512mb with an adapter to connect the media card to my computer.

This is the key. You need to be able to some how connect your cell phone with your computer in a way that does not charge you air time minutes or text message fees. Once you figure that out you should be able to side step any other fees by creating your own ring tones instead of buying them and installing any other kind of content you want onto your phone.

Thoroughly displeased I sought out my needs online. Using a combination of techdeals.com, amazon.com and eBay; I found what I was looking for. Roughly $15.00 got a 1gb micro sd card delivered to my home with SD card adapter to fit into the slot on the front of my computer.

Now I was set. I could load it up with pictures, videos*, mp3s and hopefully be able to use those mp3s as ring tones. Everything worked except the ring tones idea.

Online if you go to Google (of your search engine of choice) and type in the model number of your phone, if you are lucky there will be a forum or a tutorial. That information may be more important than the manual that comes with your phone. This is mainly because it talks about all the functionality you thought your phone should have but has been mostly out of reach to you since you bought it. I think in the future when I think that I want to buy a new cell phone I will look for this information to see how hard it’s going to be to make it do what I want.

The tutorial for my phone was written by someone who was as frustrated with the information he’d been given about his phone as he was knowledgeable about making it do what he wanted. Sadly this means there is a lot of technical informational how-to steps that I have to trust him on because I have no clue. So far I haven’t fucked up my phone.

Right now to enable my phone to use mp3s for ring tones I have to trim them down to 30sec or less, put them in a directory on the memory card called “ringtones” and connect a program called “bitpim” to my phone using a USB cable (that I don’t have) or a blue tooth connection (that I don’t have) so that my phone will look in the “ringtones” directory for ringtones. So for multiple reasons I have bought a blue tooth dongle from Australia that I am waiting for. It cost me $10.00 which is a deal compared to things available locally or from a brand name manufacturer. That is provided it actually comes in the mail and works. I have only had one thing I bought on eBay be piece of crap. That was a personal cd player that had been used and was supposed to be MP3 compatible. When it arrived it would not power up. I spent too much on a broken cd player. That was the only time. I think for $20.00 I may have been able to get the usb cable from a local store, but the blue tooth dongle is supposed to let me be 100m from my computer and still use it’s functionality. That means if I change some other things via the in-depth how to instructions I should be able to surf the internet from home on my tiny phone for free on the weekends. I guess we’ll see.

*Cell phone videos
My phone can play a variety of video formats but because the screen is small and the space is limited the format that works best is 3GP. If I play a 3GP file on my computer it comes up in a window as small as the screen on my cell phone. This is frustratingly small on a 19” monitor. However it’s not too bad when it’s played on my phone.
Sadly on the torrents the most common 3GP files abundantly available for quick download are of course pornography. If I wanted a movie the download was going to take forever or I was going to have to convert it myself. I had to find out how to convert media I have into the new format and thus I say Sin is always easy.
I did convert some video to 3GP format. It was easier than I thought it was going to be using a program called “super” that I found via the tutorial. I converted the television series “the loop” and “hitch hikers guide to the galaxy” to 3GP. Now I have the guide with me where ever I go. Eventually I rip the DVD of the movie and convert it as well as put the radio show in mp3 format on my phone.